{"title":"\"Electrical Nutrition and Glandular Control\": Eugenics, Progressive Science, and George Schuyler's Black No More","authors":"K. Adams","doi":"10.1215/0041462x-9808065","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 1931, African American journalist George Schuyler imagined a medical treatment that could turn Black people white and American politics upside down. Schuyler's novel, Black No More, uses this fictional race-altering technology to mount a satirical critique of progressive era investment in eugenic science as a tool of social reform. The novel draws on popular scientific theories of human perfection—electric medicine, hygienic nutrition, and glandular theory—to envision a mode of technological reproduction that troubles eugenic theories of biological inheritance and parodies the progressive marriage of politics and science. In reading Schuyler's contrarian engagement with American race science through the novel's use of medical technology, the essay extends critical discourse on the relationship between eugenics, progressive politics, and racial uplift in the early twentieth century. Bringing the politics of the past to bear on the present, it advances a critique of the persistent cultural legacy of progressive era scientific thought.","PeriodicalId":44252,"journal":{"name":"TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE","volume":"88 1","pages":"113 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462x-9808065","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:In 1931, African American journalist George Schuyler imagined a medical treatment that could turn Black people white and American politics upside down. Schuyler's novel, Black No More, uses this fictional race-altering technology to mount a satirical critique of progressive era investment in eugenic science as a tool of social reform. The novel draws on popular scientific theories of human perfection—electric medicine, hygienic nutrition, and glandular theory—to envision a mode of technological reproduction that troubles eugenic theories of biological inheritance and parodies the progressive marriage of politics and science. In reading Schuyler's contrarian engagement with American race science through the novel's use of medical technology, the essay extends critical discourse on the relationship between eugenics, progressive politics, and racial uplift in the early twentieth century. Bringing the politics of the past to bear on the present, it advances a critique of the persistent cultural legacy of progressive era scientific thought.
摘要:1931年，非裔美国记者乔治·斯凯勒(George Schuyler)设想了一种可以将黑人变成白人和美国政治颠倒的医疗方法。斯凯勒的小说《不再是黑人》(Black No More)利用这种虚构的改变种族的技术，对进步时代将优生科学作为社会改革工具的投资进行了讽刺批评。这部小说借鉴了关于人类完美的流行科学理论——电子医学、卫生营养和腺体理论——设想了一种技术复制模式，它困扰着生物遗传的优生理论，并模仿了政治和科学的进步结合。在阅读斯凯勒通过小说对医疗技术的运用与美国种族科学的反向接触时，本文扩展了对优生学、进步政治和20世纪初种族提升之间关系的批判性论述。它将过去的政治带到现在，对进步时代科学思想的持久文化遗产提出了批评。
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